Blogger's Sniffle

What a day! I was at work yesterday, feeling weaker and wobblier by the minute, and this morning I woke up feeling lousy. Now I often feel like this first thing, so I waited until I had showered and dressed before doing a full body recce and deciding that I was, indeed, suffering from the mansniffles.

In between trips to the kitchen for hot tea (and yet another square of kitchen roll for the GFAGN nose), I have been catching up on the many blogs that I read. One new one that I have only just found is whollyRUDE, and I recommend it to you. It's lively, right-of-centre, well-written, literate and intelligent and well worth a look. I keep going back to the photo in the blog header, can't think why. I posted a comment there this morning and got a comment back that I should blog something today myself. All day I have been trying to wind myself up to it ...

I have a list of all the blogs I read on my Google home page, but I also use Google Reader, which alerts me to new posts and allows you to read the contents from within your home page. This is a bit lazy, I know, as you don't visit the blog itself (and thereby perhaps ruin someone's stats, not sure) and you don't get to see the blog as the writer wanted it to be seen, but when you are at work and sneakily catching up with the blogosphere while you are supposed to be doing something you're paid to do, it's invaluable. But when there is nothing to read, all you get is:

Your reading list has no unread items

Am I alone in getting just a small jag of disappointment whenever I see this? It's a bit like checking an email account or an answering machine when you are expecting someone to contact you: a bit sad, a bit needy, and makes you feel guiltily obsessive, but you can't stop. Refresh, refresh, refresh. Fortunately, today has been pretty busy out there, and there has been something of interest every time I have looked. Almost.

The key issue of today has been the laughable failed palace putsch of Hewitt and Hoon - the Mutt and Jeff of the Blairite wing of the People's Party. What the fuckity fuck were they thinking of? There could only have ever been two outcomes: either they were successful in their call for a secret ballot (or a 'secret ballet', according to one poster to LabourList, which would have been far more entertaining) and Labour would have been thrown into a leadership battle just as the election campaign starts in earnest; or they failed, and delivered a damaging blow to the Prime Mentalist's pretence of unity just when he needed the support of everyone. I can't think anyone in the Labour Party, however much they can't stand Brown, would have wanted either of those: it's tantamount to electoral suicide. In fact, if the two of them weren't such long-standing members of the governing party, I would have said that the strategy was designed to do as much damage to Labour's electoral prospects as possible, and could have easily been orchestrated by the Special Ops wing of Tory Central Office.

Perhaps it really is that simple: both are leaving the Commons at the next election anyway, and this was a move guaranteed to skewer their leader's auld enemy and ensure his defeat in the most public and humiliating way possible. Nobody could be that vindictive, could they?

Well, it's that or stupid, and I think with Labour we can guess which, although it's not a black and white decision, I know.

Oh, and I liked this (h/t Iain Dale):